Last night, Pursue’s New York City Team, a group of lay leaders who organize social justice programming, held the first of three events in their year-long tenure. The two-hour Planet Money program, held at New York University’s Bronfman Center, focused on the connections between poverty and wealth in the United States–an apt topic considering the tumultuous economic climate.
After warming up the crowd–three dozen young and youngish Jews–with a hearty welcome, the City Team played several recordings of recent radio pieces that exemplify wealth disparity in the United States. A clip about an award ceremony for the creators of CDOs (one mechanism that brought about the financial collapse) was followed by a clip of a man speaking tearfully about his debt. Another clip about Wall Street bonuses was followed by a clip of a young woman from the Bronx speaking candidly about her cash-strapped upbringing.
Then the City Team introduced its first speaker: Mimi Ambramovitz, a Professor of Social Policy at the Hunter School of Social Work and the author of several publications about women, work, poverty, and social welfare policy. Mimi provided the group with a sweeping view of social and economic policy in the United States, explaining how the New Deal prescriptions that shrunk the gap between the rich and the poor–the resdistribution of income downward, the raising of taxes, the increase in government spending and business regulation, and government support of social movements–were dismantled through Ronald Reagan’s economic scheme. “The return of laissez-faire economic policy widened the inequality gap,” she said.
Mimi then went on to discuss the difference between poverty and inequality, noting that “if you’re going to do social justice work you need to understand the difference between the two.” Poverty is measured by the poverty line. For instance, a family of three living in poverty survives on less than $18,310 per year. Inequality between the rich and the poor is also measurable. But it doesn’t easily translate into economic policy. “Inequality is problematic,” said Mimi. “It’s linked to a bunch of social problems and it is dangerous to the economy. Some people are currently asking: ‘Is there a link between inequality and economic collapse?’”
Next up was Rabbi Alissa Wise, the Program Director at Ma’yan, a non-profit think tank focused on the cultural challenges and identity issues facing Jewish teenage girls. Alissa began by asking the group to think about the financial highs and lows in their familes’ histories. Most Eastern European Jews came to the United States with little money, she said, but many began to accumulate wealth after accessing education through the G.I. Bill, 99 percent of which was allocated to whites (Jews were considered white).
Then Alissa engaged the group in a wealth disparity workshop. She called upon 10 participants to occupy 10 chairs at the front of the room, each person representing one-tenth of the socioeconomic spectrum in the United States. One woman volunteered to represent the wealthiest 10 percent, and Alissa asked her to stretch out on five chairs while the other nine participants sat on top of each other in the remaining five. This gave the audience a picture of what wealth disparity looked like in 1976, when the wealthiest 10 percent of the population owned half of the country’s wealth. In 1995, things became even more unequal. The one wealthy woman stretched out along seven chairs, while the other nine people piled up on the remaning three chairs. This showed, of course, that the wealthiest 10 percent owned 70 percent of the country’s wealth, while the rest owned 30 percent. If the wealth in the United States was spread equally from person to person, Alissa said, each individual would have a whopping $250,000. After the activity, the audience broke into groups to discuss their responses to the statistics.
To wrap up, the City Team members provided the audience with a list of resources to learn more: the Fiscal Policy Institute, Citizens for Tax Justice, the Community Service Society, the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, and the Resource Generation.
“It went well,” said City Team member Jordan Steiner in an interview after the event. “It was a starting point to discuss wealth and inequality.”
Naomi Zeveloff is the blog editor of PursueAction.org.
